I'm just lucky, and had, have good doctors. My cancer was not found early. It was stage 4 tonsil, T1N2bM0, originally diagnosed with valeculla and BOT also, and so surgery was not recommended, TPF induction chemo, and Chemoradiation was. I only had 5 days IC chemo, and had no further treatment until a year and three months later due to my near deadly chemo reaction, and know, knew, that chemo alone does not kill cancer, it's only temporary, and IC lasts less than a year, if it does, so all that time cancer was left to do what it does, my mind left to wonder, no further cancer scans, and was not expected to survive anyway, never mind the cancer, and was not medically fit anyway for further treatment until I had a recurrence at 8 months, less than a year, a month after my first somewhat clear post treatment scan, and only had radiation then, and MO refused chemo, saying my body would not be able to handle it. Even after 70Gy, bilaterally, I had another recurrence about 5 months later with two nodal involved, which required a MRND, but during surgery, surgeon found everything twitsted, and shrunken from radiation, so he did a RND, taking out the neck muscle, vein, nerve. Luckly he did, because cancer was also found in the removed neck muscle. I also needed alloderm to put on the caroid artery for protection due to the scraping off the twisted, shrunken structures. Chemoradiation was suggested after by the ENT, but my MO, RO refused due them to my health. All fine, but then I had another recurrence in one of the nodes in level V, even with the neck dissection in levels ll-V, which thought odd, but there are 300 lymphs in the HN, most microscopic. The day of surgery, while in pre-op, for my 2nd dissection, a minute before the doctor came in, I found another lump in my neck in level lll. ENT was dumbfounded at first, and decided to remove It along with the other in level V. Turns out neither was a lymph node, and both were metatastic free form or roaming cancer, that could have come from anywhere, plus I had positive margins, lymphovascular and Perneural invasion, meaning cancer may likely spread vis the nerve or vein lines, in additin to the free form or roaming cancer. Further surgery was not going to be given again, chemo was going to be limited to Erbitux only, and radiation was limited only to 50Gy, so I went elsewhere. Lucky I did, cause I had another recurrence a month later, this time in the epidermal layers of the skin. I had another radical neck dissection to remove whatever they can, was left, 15Gy IORT during surgery while the neck was exposed, which is equivelrnt to 3-4 x that of IMRT, a pec flap to protect the carotid artery, which earlier alloderm had to be peeled off first, and also in order to be able to get additional radiation. About 6 weeks later, I had 5 weeks 50Gy IMRT, Erbitux, and Taxotere. Had a clear post treatment scan in Feb, like all before that, but never made it past that mark, so my PET this August is very important, and one I'll gauge matters at, not the three month post treatment scan. This was my condensed version.